Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturer has announced it will cut 500 jobs in Finland, lowering expectations from the proposed 800 employees that were announced with labor unions in December. Wereported in Decemberthat Nokia had complied with Finnish labour legislation, entering negotiations about the planned reductions in October with personnel representatives. It was announced that the maximum impact on staff would not exceed 800 employees as the company would look to relocate as many of its workers as possible....

Nokiahas announcedthat it has appointed former Nokia Services product unit lead Michael Halbherr as its new executive vice president to spearhead the company’s mobile and location-based based services, reporting directly to CEO Stephen Elop. Halbherr will assume control from July 1, leading a new Location & Commerce business, which will see Nokia’s NAVTEQ business merged with its social location services operations, to develop a new range of social location products in smartphones but also as platform services for other device manufacturers, app developers, ISP and advertisers....

WhenNokia announcedit was to partner with Microsoft, adopting the Windows Phone 7 platform as its primary smartphone operating system, its CEO Stephen Elop noted that the company was still committed to launching one MeeGo device in 2011. GSMArena reportsthat Nokia’s CTO Rich Green, speaking at a recent Nokia Developer Day noted that the the MeeGo handset in question will be known as the Nokia N950, the successor to Nokia’s N900 handset, which hasbeen notedfor its ability to run nearly every operating system that can be thrown at it....

Nokiahas announcedthat it has appointed Henry Tirri as the company’s permanent Chief Technology Officer (CTO), after the executive temporarily occupied the position after the resignation of Rich Green, who left the company “for personal reasons”. The Nokia Group Executive Board member’s leave was confirmed by Nokia, saying it was due to medical reasons, but the company refrained from detailing the length of his absence or the reasons behind it. Two independent sources said at the time that Green’s leave would last at least until the end of the year, with it highly likely that he would not return to Nokia thereafter....

You might remember theleaked rendersof the Windows Phone 7-powered Nokia devices that surfaced the other day. Nokia has just confirmed that these were official and initial reactions to the renders has made the Finnish company more determined to get Windows Phone 7 devices out before the end of 2011. We are live at Nokia’s press briefing at the Mobile World Congress and Nokia has just showed us some of the other renders they developed when it first became known that the company would be partnering with Microsoft....